Scars Never Fade Away
by xxtigergirlxx
Summary: When David returns to the Animorphs hometown with new recruits, it's up to Jake, Rachel, Marco, and Tobias to stop him from reeking havoic on all of Earth. But can they do it alone? The long awaited sequel to The Other Yeerk Resistance!
1. Jake's Realization

Jake

**Jake**

I woke with a sigh and opened my eyes to the piercing white light. My head throbbed over and over again. The world around hurt to look at. I tilted my head to the side and barely made out two gray blobs on the other end of my bed. I weakly tried to sit up, but I was weighed down on my right side by a grey figure.

The figure stirred.

"Jake?" A voice whispered sleepily. Then, glancing around, it shook its head and looked away. _Rachel._ I tried to say her name. _Rachel. _My voice and lips would not respond. A single wave of panic washed over me. Could I have been Yeerked?

No. I could still move my eyes and breathe on my own. I was just in shock. I quickly let out a sigh of relief. Another grey blob jolted awake.

"Jake? Oh my God! Marco, Rachel, wake up! He's awake!" Came the excited, raspy voice. Tobias. It had to be him. He walked over to my side next to Rachel and knelt down while Marco (at least I think it was Marco) turned on several other burning lights.

I shut my eyes in protest. When I reopened them, the images came clear. Rachel leaned in nearest to me, eyes full of hope and a warm smile shining brightly at me. Tobias was just behind her, looking extremely relieved. On my left, was Marco, grinning down at me like I just might disappear.

But that wasn't what really scared me.

All three of them were covered; head to toe, in what looked like ash and soot. Rachel's hair was startlingly long, dirty and streaked with what must have been blood from the many wounds on her face and neck. Her blue eyes were dull and had lost the fire that I loved to see in them.

Marco's smile was forced. That much I could see. His face mirrored Rachel's; cuts and bruises all over and an out of focused look to his eyes. Marco's hair was matted to his hair with sweat.

Tobias almost looked the same as when I had seen him last. Untidy blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and an innocent smile. He didn't sport wounds like Marco and Rachel did, but he had one long scar that ran down through his right eye to the very corner of his mouth. He was blind in that eye, but the other seemed to work fine.

"What happened?" I tried to say. My voice wasn't quite working yet, so what they probably heard was "Wah apped?" Marco handed me a glass of water and I took a sip. I cleared my throat and began again.

"What happened?" I repeated, enunciating slowly. Rachel laughed quietly.

"You were mauled by David." She explained. I gagged on my water and began coughing violently. My lungs were on fire! I laid down and tried to make sense of what I had just heard.

"D-David?" I stammered. All three of them nodded their heads. I glanced around at the room. We were in a hospital. I looked again at how much Rachel's hair had grown.

"How long have I been out?" I asked quickly, taking another sip. Rachel thought it over.

"Uhm, I'd say a little over four weeks." She replied. I spat out the water again.

"FOUR WEEKS!" I gasped. Marco looked at me sympathetically.

"Yeah man, we thought you were a goner." He informed me. But I had stopped listening.

My breath caught in my throat quite suddenly as I thought of something. There were only three other Animorphs in this room with me when there should have been five. And I wasn't about to believe that Cassie didn't want to come to see me in the hospital and let Tobias take her place.

"Jake?" Tobias asked. "Are you alright?" They all looked at me expectantly.

"Where's Cassie?" I responded, my voice close to a whisper. Rachel leaned in closer to hear me. Marco, however, looked away. He had heard me but didn't want to tell me the truth I should have seen.

"Where is she?" I repeated loudly through clenched teeth. Now it was Rachel's turn to look away. My eyes began to water. "Rachel... please, where's Cassie? And Ax. He should be here too. Where are they?" I cried desperately.

"Jake, I-I'm so sorry…" she sobbed. My heart stopped. I swear it must have, because at that very moment my world collapsed. Simply shattered into billions of tiny pieces. Never to be replaced. Never to be fixed. For I knew the answer before it escaped her lips.

"They're gone, Jake. They're both dead."


	2. Old Memories

Tobias

**Tobias**

I saw Jake's eyes go blank, almost unseeing. The news had hit him hard as expected. We all watched as his shoulders sagged and he fell back in the bad. He closed his eyes and just lay there.

"How did this happen?" He asked us levelly. I looked at Rachel, pleading with her to say anything but the truth. She, however, ignored me probably as lying about their cause of death would be an insult to their memory.

"It was David, Jake. David murdered them." She informed him quietly, her head bowed slightly. When his eyes continued to bore into her, she shuffled her feet nervously. "We were all in the woods…" she began and I suddenly found myself reliving the past.

**Three weeks ago**

We were safe for now, it seemed. We had lost David hours ago in the thick woods but Cassie, not wanting to take any chances after the last time, suggested we keep moving. After the whole hospital scene, David had miraculously disappeared into thin air. Alfred and his team bolted out of there. Cassie, Rachel, and Marco returned to their homes after checking up on Jake.

Or at least what was left of them.

They discovered, upon arrival, that David had taken the time to deliberately burn all three houses to the ground along with anything- or anyone- inside.

For Cassie, the fire department hadn't made it in time.

Her parents were incinerated in a few seconds, and the animals in the barn were burned to the bone. When we all realized it was time to move out, the Animorphs took refuge in the Hork-Bajir valley where Toby informed us David had also been.

Cassie took the loss of her parents very hard. Though there weren't any bodies to bury, Marco suggested we carve headstones for them and place them beneath a large oak tree. He told us that they had done this for his mother's funeral and Cassie graciously accepted.

The New Yorkers stumbled upon the valley after sometime and were also taking refuge in one of the many cabins built by Toby's people.

Then, one day while I was flying, I happened to see a certain lion walking through the woods towards our camp. I quickly flew back the way I came and gathered all the Animorphs.

To my surprise, Cassie and Ax weren't there.

It ended up being that David was merely browsing through to try and scare us. He came to the valley and mentioned something about how we keep on losing our teammates one by one. Then he left.

It wasn't until a few days later that we realized what he had meant.

Rachel and I were flying again. Cassie and Ax still hadn't returned, and naturally we had begun to worry. After several minutes of calling out to them in thought-speech, I caught a glimpse of someone under a tree below.

((Tobias.)) she had said. ((Does that look like someone to you?)) I looked around.

((Where?)) I asked her. Her eyesight was far more superior to mine, since her morph was able to see underwater.

((Follow me.)) she replied, forcing herself into a quick dive. I eagerly followed. The ground was rushing up at us, faster, faster! Then, suddenly, I saw Rachel pull out of her dive and flap away like something had startled her. I continued my descent.

What I saw made me sick to my stomach.

It was Cassie, or at least what was left of her. Her clothes had been strewn everywhere, and she was completely naked. My first thought as I came closer, was that she had been raped and had been knocked out. But as I swooped low to the scene, I saw what Rachel had seen.

It was her skin. It was gone!


	3. A Shocking Discovery

Rachel

**Rachel**

**Three weeks ago**

I flew away from the scene where my best friend lay dead. That sick creep! How could anyone be that twisted to completely remove somebody's skin? I circled back around when I realized Tobias hadn't followed my suit.

He was couched over the spot where she lay. I quickly landed and demorphed. Then I turned to face the scene. I could see it all clearly now. Cassie was lying on her stomach with her wrists tightly bound to the tree. A thick puddle of blood pooled out beneath her body.

I covered my mouth with a cupped hand. She was dead. She had to be. No one could survive this type of torture! But Tobias, being the optimist of the group, turned her face up to check her internal organs.

I looked away and threw up.

Her front looked the same as her back: skin-less. We could see _inside _of her body. I saw her stomach, her lungs, and her very veins. The one thing neither of us saw was her heart.

A neat, circular cut had been made directly over the spot where her heart should have been. The muscle itself had been removed from her chest. Her once beautiful face was now contorted by a mask of pain. Blood still flowed out of her eye sockets and it looked as though her very lips had been ripped apart.

Tobias placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"I'm gonna try to find Ax." He said. "Maybe he's still alive." With that, he demorphed and took off from the ground in the direction of the forest.

Now that he couldn't see me, I fell to the ground and began to sob. My best friend was dead. My cousin was dead. There were only four Animorphs still alive. That is, if Ax was even still living.

I got up and lay down next to Cassie, wishing I could die. But I couldn't, at least not yet. There was still work to be done and a war to be won. I wiped the tears from my face when I saw Tobias soaring back.

((It's alright, Rach. Ax is back at the valley safe and sound.)) Was what he didn't say. What he actually said in reality was, ((Gather Toby's people and meet me by the large willow tree. And hurry. You need to see this.)) Then he took off in the direction he came.

I looked down at my best friend. I hated to leave her like this, but I promised her that I would be back. And I would. I morphed to bird and took off.

The valley soon came into sight. I flew faster. Tobias had told me to hurry, so I was. I spotted Toby sitting around a warm campfire with her Hork-Bajir friends and Marco. I saw Marco looked up and wave.

((I see you, pee brain.)) I said shortly. Marco obviously looked taken aback when I landed on one of the fallen logs around the fire, careful staying clear from the flames. He searched the skies around me.

"Where are Tobias, Ax and Cassie?" Toby asked me. I looked at her sadly, or what I thought was sad. I wasn't exactly sure if birds could make facial expressions. I pushed that thought to the back of my mind. I could always ask Cassie-.

Oh, that's right. Cassie's dead.

I sighed. ((Tobias is still looking for Ax, Ax is still missing, and Cassie is…)) I trailed off. I couldn't say it. Marco looked at me expectantly. He had never seen Xena hesitate. I knew that he felt something was wrong but couldn't exactly place his finger on it.I decided to help him out.

((Cassie…Cassie is d-dead.)) I finished sadly. Marco and Toby gasped.

"Rachel, how did this happen?" Toby asked me. I began to explain, then cut myself off as I remembered why I was here in the first place.

((It's not important. Well, actually, it is. But not right now! Listen, Toby, Tobias needs you to gather your people and meet him by the large willow tree just outside the forest. He also says to hurry. I-I think it's about Ax.))

**A/N: sorry to leave you guys hanging! It's just that I've gotta go pretty soon, and I don't know what else should happen from Rachel's POV…… anyways, I will update by next week!**

**With love,**

**Xxtgxx**

**AKW- does this chapter answer your question? If not… let me know!**

David was still out there. Which means, as long as he was alive, we could never be safe. I wrapped my arms around myself and vowed that I would kill him. I would kill him for all that he had done. No matter what, I would not let him escape.

Not again. Not this time.


End file.
